Re: hackamores

[Lif Strand <fasterhorses@gilanet.com>]

Cheryl - You bet I've got horses that "check out" theri brain cells at
the start!  I think it's a bad negative feedback cycle, with the horse
being jazzed because of all the commotion and adrenaline in the air, and
me being freaked out because of the same, and the horse being more
jazzed because I'm freaked out, and so on.

But I really think the key is me, the rider.  To just get myself under
control - mentally.  If I'm cool, my horses are cool.  Since I am now
riding a lot of young, green horses I'm starting under saddle, this
business of keeping myself under control has proven to be crucial.
Also, I have come to the conclusion that it's unrealistic to expect
horses in training to be perfect, just like I think its unrealistic to
expect most horses to not be excited at the start of a race.

So maybe - and this is not anything written in stone, mind you - maybe
the ticket here is not to worry about a horse that wants to go like
crazy for the first 15 or however many miles.  I know this is blasphemy,
but maybe if a horse was just conditioned enough so that it could do
that without suffering from any ill effects....

It seems to me that in the wild (I compare domestic behavior to wild
behavior a lot) when horses in a herd all take off together, it means
probably one of the slow ones is going to become lunch.  And maybe it's
asking a lot of a horse to ignore those creepy feelings of anticipation
of fangs.  I know, I know, horse should be trained, etc etc.

So here we have a bunch of jazzed up horses all bunched together waiting
to start a race - they're all in excellent condition, they are
competitive (horses just seem to love running full out against each
other) with lots & lots of energy, and some are barely controlled, and
the riders are nervous, some, actually, scared to death.  Well, I bet
even experienced horses think this is a whole lot of fun and want to
participate fully in every bit of it!  But when the pack takes off, I
bet that nagging feeling of becoming lunch has to enter the picture, and
then our efforts to control may actually trigger flight/fight reflex, no
matter how well trained or experienced a horse is.

I found that when I could relax myself & trust that my horse, who in
fact was extremely well trained & no matter how much he was acting up,
wasn't going to actually do anything to hurt me, the starts were much
easier on me.  And when I just let him pick his own pace from the start,
asking for just enough attention to me so that we had steering control
and at least a little of the edge off the maniac speed, he would pay
full attention to me much sooner than when I tried full control from the
start.

By the way, I start towards the rear - not necessarily at the back.
Reasons:  I have not been a top 10 rider & didn't want to 1) get in the
way of those who are and 2) give ideas to my horse about becoming an
instant top 10 horse if he wasn't.  I have felt that, as I am not
particularly competitive, if we were good enough that day to be in the
top finishers, the difference of one or 2 minutes at the start wasn't
going to matter.  That has worked for me.

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                                    ____________
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